MISSING DEFENDANT IN DRUG CASE SOUGHT

While Nathan Platt Jr. pleaded no contest to a drug trafficking charge Friday in Broward Circuit Court, a search was under way for the suspected leader in the operation who, authorities say, fled the country after posting $500,000 bail.

A warrant has been issued for the arrest of Carlos Alberta Mejia, 42, of Miami, who authorities say is a major international drug trafficker with ties to two Colombian drug smuggling families, Ochoa and Arroyave.

"We have reason to believe he has fled the country," said John King, an agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. "We have reason to believe we know where he's at and are trying to apprehend him."

Platt, authorities say, joined with Mejia, a Colombian, and four other men in February in trying to fly 400 kilos of cocaine from Colombia into South Florida. The plane crashed at Brighton Indian Reservation near Moore Haven and the pilot, presumed to be Alan A. Beck of Fort Lauderdale, was killed.

Authorities said the cocaine known to be on the plane was destroyed in the fiery crash.

On Friday, Platt, 30, of Moore Haven, a former corrections officer in Okeechobee County, pleaded no contest to being an accessory after the fact to trafficking in cocaine and was sentenced by Broward Circuit Judge Mel Grossman to five years in state prison.

"He was on the road where the plane came in and crashed. He was a lookout making sure police didn't come," said James Lewis Jr., an assistant statewide prosecutor who is handling the case.

Mejia and two other defendants -- Alan Baker Parrott, who is in the Broward County Jail, and Roosevelt Bray, who is in a Georgia prison awaiting extradition to Florida -- are charged with trafficking in cocaine, conspiracy to traffic in cocaine and second-degree murder under the felony-murder doctrine. They were charged with murder in the death of Beck.

Another man was indicted on the same charges, Lewis said, but because he is not in custody his name has not been disclosed publicly.